Ultima Underworld for Sega Genesis?

by · Published · Updated

Bandit LOAF (of Wing Commander CIC fame) alerted me over the weekend to the existence of this video from the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. In it, we see revealed the fact that a Sega Genesis-based port of Ultima Underworld was in the works for the Sega CD.

Wait for it; it happens shortly after the 3:00 mark:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tvAIar6NB8&w=480&h=390]

It might actually have worked as a console FPRPG.

Astute observers will also have noticed that another famous Origin title, Wing Commander, was also slated to be released on the Sega CD. Alas, while the Wing Commander port was released (and was evidently quite good), Underworld never saw the light of day.

Tags:

7 Responses

  1. Andy_Panthro says:
    May 24, 2011 at 11:23 pm

    Very interesting! I wonder how they would have been controlled?

    Wing Commander would surely map to a controller quite well, but Underworld? seems unlikely.

    You only have to look at modern cross-platform cRPGs to see how much the controller alters UI compared to a mouse-driven interface.

  2. Bandit LOAF Dragon says:
    May 24, 2011 at 11:24 pm

    Ahh–I just reread my update, it does sound like I was saying WC never came out. Wing Commander Sega CD was released–it’s a very cool version with full speech. (Regular Genesis ports of WC1 and 2 were both cancelled at different times, though.)

  3. Serpentine says:
    May 24, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    Watching the cursor movement slowly drift seems very un-console-like, especially for that period in time, seems far more like an old blocky serial mouse 🙂 Would have been interesting!

  4. Micro Magic says:
    May 25, 2011 at 1:13 am

    Who’s playing the turbo duo? One asian guy in a suit… probably the guy running the kiosk!

    All I see are a bunch of 30 something dudes wearing suits. The place looks virtual empty!

    But I gotta tell you man, straight up, when sega cd comes out, Imma be the first one to buy it.

    And when my friends come over, I’m gunna charge -them- to play this.

    LAWL!!! That’s a great clip!

  5. Sergorn says:
    May 25, 2011 at 10:30 am

    I’m actually not sure this video is even showing the Sega-CD version. I mean this pretty looks exactly like the PC version and there’s no way in hell it would have had the exact same graphics and UI methinks.

    I might be wrong of course, but it’s possible they just used placeholder video from the PC version while the Sega CD version was being worked on

  6. Bandit LOAF Dragon says:
    May 25, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    That’s quite possible! This was a good 18 months before Wing Commander shipped, so these initial announcements may have been showing the PC version.